Sex Differences and Semantic Support in Toddlers’ Spoken Word Recognition

Research shows that as toddlers grow and their vocabulary expands, their ability to recognize a referent after hearing its name worsens when they encounter similar-sounding words (e.g., dog-door) or words from the same category (e.g., dog-chicken) compared to unrelated words (e.g., dog-boat). This study investigated the impact of phonological and semantic similarities between words on spoken word recognition in toddlers. We presented 21-month-old English monolinguals with a Preferential Looking Task adapted to a priming paradigm while their eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. Participants were presented with a spoken word (prime) followed by a related or unrelated spoken word (target). The experiment included three conditions: Phonologically Related, where words share the initial phonemes (e.g., toe-toast); Semantically Related, where words share the initial phonemes and belong to the same category (e.g., turkey-turtle); and Unrelated, where words do not share the initial phonemes and do not belong to the same category (e.g., bubble-toast and box-turtle). Growth curve analyses revealed more target looks in the Unrelated condition than in the Phonologically Related condition and more looks in the Semantically Related condition than in the Unrelated and Phonologically Related conditions. These results suggest better word recognition when a word is both phonologically and semantically related than when it is unrelated or only phonologically related. Female toddlers demonstrated more pronounced word recognition than male toddlers. This study extends our understanding of the roles of phonological and semantic cues, as well as sex differences, in language processing among young toddlers.